Monday: The plan was to go running, but it was pouring so I did a whole heck of a lot of lunges inspired by Fitnessista’s 10 Ways to Lunge. I also did 3 minutes of a forearms and toes plank (10 seconds of holding the plank, 5 seconds relaxing).

Tuesday: I went for a 3 mile run (alternating 5 mins. running and 1 min. walking) and did another 3 minute plank. The best part about the run was that my Garmin magically started working. It stopped charging about a year ago so it just died. Granted I haven’t really tried to use it in a year, but the other day I randomly decided to see if it would charge…and it did!

I had been using RunKeeper and and I never felt like it was accurate (which I don’t necessarily blame on RunKeeper, the GPS on my phone isn’t the best). Compared to my Garmin RunKeeper was about .16 off (it was done faster than it should have been).

Wednesday: Plank day! I used another Fitnessista page as a guide. I did 10 seconds of holding a plank and 5 seconds off for the following planks: regular plank, hip twist plank, lifting right leg plank, lifting left leg plank, supermans. I did it once, then I did it again. I also did 50 leg lifts and 50 scissor lifts.

Thursday: All I wanted to do was go for a run. It was supposed to be sunny all day, but it ended up being overcast and rainy all day. It looked like it was clearing up when I left work, but when I got to Brooklyn it was lightly raining. I don’t mind running in light rain (I kind of like it) so I said I’d still go. Then it started down pouring, and kept down pouring until around 8pm. Bye, bye run.

Friday: Tons of walking, but no time for a real workout.

Saturday: I ran 3 miles at my parents’ house (again, 5 mins. running alternated with 1 min. walking). It’s so nice to run somewhere less hilly. But it was humid and I finished a sweaty mess.

What else I’ve been up to

I went to NJ for work on Wednesday.

The work part of my trip went really well and then I did some shopping.

New espadrilles. I actually need to exchange them. I only tried on the right one in the store and when I got home and put the left one on the left one was smaller. I tried to exchange them Friday afternoon but the Michael Kors store by my office (which has super snooty employees, FWIW) didn’t have an 8.5. I’ll try some of their other stores next week.

I actually have these in gold from last year.

I LOVE them and wore them everywhere last summer. However, after a month the sole fell off, luckily it wasn’t anything crazy glue couldn’t solve.

Then, this year, the whole bottom started falling off.

Again, crazy glue is a miracle worker 🙂 Now I’m probably crazy for buying the same shoes that fell apart on me, but whatever, I love them, I don’t care.

I took the train out to my parents’ house yesterday afternoon. That picture shows the crush of people on the platform with the reflection of the train. The confusion pretty much sums up my trip.

I went to the bank to cash in all my change. When my parents came in for my wrist surgery I had them take the change back with them since it’s so heavy. My bank here has a change machine, but the one in the city doesn’t. The change is actually from the piggy bank I talked about in this old post. I had $61.03!

For my birthday this year I decided to make myself a cake. Some people (my mother) think it’s sad I made my own cake, but I love baking and enjoyed doing it. Since I love anything with malted milk I decided to make a Triple Chocolate Malt Cake. I followed the recipe for the cake and icing exactly, except I used melted butter instead of vegetable oil in the cake.

I was really proud of how flat both of the layers were.

I didn’t really need a crumb coat, the outside was maybe slightly overdone, but I did one any way and the inside of the cake was so moist.

I put ultimate malted milk balls (milk, dark, and white chocolate) from The Nutbox on the outside of the cake.

For my party I invited a bunch of friends to watch the Kentucky Derby at Commonwealth, a bar in my neighborhood. It’s a Kentucky bar so they had a really good turnout.

There were lots of people dressed up and they even did a little gambling thing. My horse, Bodemeister, almost won, but then another stupid horse came and stole it at the end. Goodbye $40. I drank lots of Germain Threats, a delicious gin, St. Germain, ginger drink and had a good time with my friends. A few of us went out for dinner when we finally left the bar around 9 and I was still home by 11. Perfect!

Yes, a recap of what I did this weekend. I really like these posts but lately I’ve seen bloggers bash their own recap posts which I think it strange. They’re really great!

Friday started with a pool party at my friend Elisa’s apartment. It was an overcast, hot day, just like every other day she’s hosted us for a pool party. Why break tradition, right? The best tradition of the Elisa pool party is breaking out our friend Erica’s delicious 7-layer dip the moment we arrive. That stuff is so good and so dangerous.

After devouring 7-layer dip we headed down to the pool to barbeque.

There were a few problems getting the BBQs working, but luckily her building’s great maintenance man fixed everything and we were soon in business.

Burgers, sausage, and corn. Yum! (And note to self, my scarf tied like that is not flattering!)

We hung out by the pool for awhile and around 6pm decided to go upstairs for dessert. Which was good because right when we got upstairs it started pouring.

If you don’t know what that means just Google. The birthday girl says it all the time.

I got home around 11pm Friday night and happily crashed.

When I woke up Saturday morning I intended to go running but I just wasn’t feeling it. Instead I decided to take in a matinee showing of Crazy, Stupid, Love.

I’ve been so excited to see this movie since I love all of the actors. Sadly I was disappointed. In my opinion, the movie focused too much on the babysitter and Steve Carrel’s son. And too much on Steve Carrel. I wanted more focus on Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. It was a cute story though, not really original, but it was entertaining. Probably better to wait for the DVD though.

Since I didn’t get my run in I brought my gym clothes with me to go to the gym right from the movie. That worked well and I was in, on the elliptical, and out in no time.

After a quick stop at the grocery store I went home to relax in front of DVRed episodes of Suits. Anyone else watch that? I think it’s pretty good!

Then it was time to get ready to meet my friend Natalie, who was down from Boston, and a group of people at Motorino in Williamsburg.

Unfortunately it took me 5 trains to get there (stupid weekend construction), but luckily there was a long wait for a table so I didn’t miss any food!

Three of us split the Cremini, Margherita DOC, and the special pizza (all I remember was the heirloom tomatoes and raw basil). They were all delicious, but I thought the cremini was the best.

The only I picture I snapped from the night was one in the bathroom.

I wore my romper (same outfit as here) and it’s just so annoying to go to the bathroom. That’s my belt and cardigan on the top of the toilet (I didn’t know where else to put them!).

I got home just before midnight (I love that I was home before midnight both days and didn’t get drunk this weekend). And headed to bed so I could wake up to run.

I did indeed go for a run Sunday morning and it was hot! In the shade wasn’t bad, but when the sun was shining down on me it was terrible!

I managed to run 3 miles with only 2 walking breaks, but man, it was rough!

I called my parents as I walked home and also stopped for a bagel along the way. Then I did some weights and caught up on Necessary Roughness (another USA show I really like).

Otherwise I’ve just been relaxing. It’s been nice to have some downtime since last week was pretty crazy and the week ahead will be pretty crazy as well.

I’m going to head out to grab some food in a bit and then keep relaxing. Perfect Sunday!

Since I was going home this past weekend I didn’t want to go home two weekends in a row. Therefore I missed Mother’s Day. My mother, who has been a vegan for a year now, gave me lots of guilt about not being home and sent many passive aggressive messages that I should bake her these cupcakes.

I’ll admit that I’ve always been interested in the British royals, mainly William and Harry since they’re around my age and, like most people, I have very vivid memories of when their mother died. I was never obsessive about it, but I’ll read an article if I see one. I watched the ITN interview William and Kate did when they got engaged and I figured I would watch the wedding, but that was about it.

Then one of my friends at work became obsessed with it and would send daily updates and the wedding became our main topic at lunch. So I decided to throw a royal wedding party (and I might have read this book).

On that Thursday night 3 of my friends slept over and the following morning 2 more friends, who live close to me, came over to watch with me and my roommate. I had spent the past 3 days cleaning and getting ready for them so I was exhausted. Still, at 4am, I jumped out of bed, excited to watch the festivities.

I made these chocolate chip scones. Except I added two tablespoons of orange zest which I highly recommend.

(Pictured uncooked, I never got a cooked picture.)

We bought my friend Elisa, the really obsessed one, a replica of William and Kate’s engagement ring.

We enjoyed a delicious spread that included my scones, bagels, tea, and mimosas.

My friend Laura and I also may have made royal wedding cupcakes for the bake off at work.

Cupcake toppers are from here. Cupcake recipe is the devil’s food cake from this book and the icing is the Magnolia bakery’s recipe. Design is purely our own 🙂

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I’m actually not a fan of St. Patrick’s Day. I’m all about afternoon drinking and having a good time, but St. Patrick’s Day, much like New Year’s Eve, just seems like amateur hour to me.

But I do like Irish Soda bread and this year I decided to make my own. And unfortunately I hated it, like spit it out and threw away the piece I cut off. This is another story of my failure. I wasn’t going to link to the recipe (because I don’t think that’s very nice), but I brought the bread to work and everyone loved it, so maybe it’s me? Anyway here it is.

This is the story of my adventures with red velvet brownies. A few weeks ago I saw a recipe for the brownies on How Sweet It Is. (I should preface all of this by saying that I don’t really like red velvet.) For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about the red velvet brownies and, since I had all the ingredients on-hand, I made them.

(The weekend before I made them I had made my roommate (a pack rat) throw away everything from our kitchen that we don’t use. Included in that was about 3 things of red food coloring. Which sucked when I had to go spend $4 on red food coloring when I made the brownies a second time.)

I followed the recipe exactly (except I only used one tablespoon of red food coloring and then a tablespoon of water to achieve the right consistency for the paste), but I didn’t make the white chocolate frosting because I don’t like frosting on brownies. And because I think red velvet should have cream cheese frosting.

They were delicious. But they were missing something.

And that something was cream cheese.

(Ugh, that picture is ugly, stupid nighttime lighting. Another reason turning the clocks ahead is annoying: no early morning sun to take pictures.)

Having never made cream cheese brownies before I consulted about a million recipes and eventually made the cream cheese filling from this one.

They turned out very well. Although, be warned, they are more “cakey” than “fudgey.” It was a little hard to get the swirl right since the brownie batter is very thick. So the brownies aren’t the prettiest, but they still taste great.

Welcome!

I'm a 27 year old who lives in NYC and works in publishing. After struggling with health and fitness for years, I feel I've finally found a way to live my life to its fullest. Read about my adventures in NYC and everywhere else, with a focus on trying to eat healthy and exercise.

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